Where's all the spam gone?

In today's breakfast topic, I noted that I haven't gotten any gold spam in the time I've played since patch 2.1.0 came along. And oh, what a change it is! I was always a good little player, taking the time to report any gold selling spam to a GM, but usually by the time a GM got around to looking at my ticket, I'd have gotten at least five more piece of spam -- and that was if I opened my ticket during off-hours.
So what's the magical change that's stopped spam in its tracks this patch? Obviously, there's the new spam reporting system, which makes reporting anyone an easy task: just right-click on their name and select the "report spam" option. You'll no longer get whispers, see text, or receive mails from that player for the duration of your game session and the incident is automatically forwarded on to a GM. But even if every player were duitifully reporting every spammer, I wouldn't expect such a dramatic change in the level of spam. CM Drysc notes that as of the patch, trial accounts can no longer whisper other players -- at least not without players whispering them first. I don't know about you, but I think this simple step may have been the magic bullet.
Filed under: Patches






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Phoenic May 24th 2007 9:15AM
I did receive my first spam since the patch last night.. about 3 hours into my session. The spammers are hurting.. but they aren't dead yet.
HolyLiaison May 24th 2007 9:17AM
I didn't get any the day of the patch.
But I did get some the next day. Not to the magnitude I used to. But I still got a few.
Gungolf May 24th 2007 9:51AM
I had the pleasure to report a gold spammer who was advertising in general chat, but apart from that no spam, no whispers an no mail. But I had the impression that the number of spam was decreasing some days prior to the patch, already, at least on Proudmoore-EU. Received only one single spam for like 3 days before the patch.
ImR May 24th 2007 10:06AM
but how am I going to know who has the best deals when I want to buy gold?
:p
Jon May 24th 2007 11:36AM
Blizzard also changed many things with their windows, handlers, etc. All of the bots, etc are all having to be reprogrammed to work with the new client. We'll probably start seeing some sort of spams starting again in 1-2 weeks time..
Kunisaki May 24th 2007 10:11AM
I'm happy to report I haven't had ANY. I think its great that temporary accounts can no longer whisper paying players. As for spam in the general chat? I'm pretty much used to trash talking, off topic crap. Seeing it come from a gold spammer... as long as they don't do it every second of every day... i'm cool with it. That user friendly way to report spamming will help with problams such as that.
Orin May 24th 2007 10:04AM
I got about 50% of the usual gold spam on patch day (Tuesday). On Wednesday it was back to at least 90% of the usual amount...
rihahn May 24th 2007 10:13AM
On Tanaris it took them about 5 hours to figure out all they needed to do was have a "real" account on standby to send a whisper to the trial account, then spam away on the trial.
Not much has changed for us. :P
Psynei May 24th 2007 10:18AM
@7. Think you're failing to understand what they've done, a trial account can whisper ONLY those players who have whispered it first and not generally whisper other players. The spammers must be using a full account and just creating random characters for the whispering.
rihahn May 24th 2007 10:18AM
^^ At least that's how I think they're getting around it... All I know is whatever Blizz did, they got around it pretty quick.
Sylythn May 24th 2007 10:23AM
Lucky you - I ended up with 4 in about 2 hours while running Kara.
jcgooch May 24th 2007 10:26AM
The first few days after a major patch (and this was the biggest non-expansion patch, according to Blizz) are always rocky. I attribute much of the reduced spam to this fact. The new anti-spam features may be working, but we won't really know for sure until all the dust from the patch has settled.
Tom May 24th 2007 10:38AM
Blizz won the battle but not the war, they find new way to spam around ingame. As long as you (yes you ;-) buy gold.
Rorlins the Dwarf May 24th 2007 10:51AM
Trial accounts can't whisper? So how's my friend that finally decided to try going to tell me he's on? He has to first email me his character name, then I have to friend him and then I have to whisper him?
Sorry.... that's tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
Ahoni May 24th 2007 11:13AM
Spam Assasain FTW! Found the perfect tool for spam blocking.
http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=4372
Preforms /who messages on unknown players you have not talked to before. If the player level less than 2, the message is ignored.
Features
- Does not interfere with GM tells
- Does not rely on matching common gold farmer URLs which is unreliable.
- Background /who checking is hidden
Have not gotten a single gold spam on any of my toons since I installed this about a week ago.
hoss May 24th 2007 11:16AM
@13
It was an ugly baby anyway.
EvilCheese May 24th 2007 11:33AM
Speak for yourself. I got 6 gold spams while running Kara last night. During the twenty minutes I spent farming this morning, I got another one.
I think it's been well established that trial accounts are not the source of the problem. As for not letting them whisper, I agree with some that posted here... that's too far.
The real magic bullet? How many non-spammers need to whisper hundreds of different people in a matter of 60 seconds?
Flood control imo.
Tyler May 24th 2007 12:16PM
I'm on Kel'Thuzad and I'm still getting several spams every day. Its better than before, but I'm not that impressed by the solution...
oshin May 24th 2007 12:36PM
Im willing to bet many spammers use a stolen credit cards to make full accounts, which gets around the trial account problem. Flood control is the real key indeed, its shocking its not in wow considering almost every other game or program with chat ability has it. Can anybody legitimately send 5 whispers a second ?
Angelcorpse May 24th 2007 2:14PM
i haven't gotten a spam whisper since 2.1.0 but yet i was in Stormwind city and seen in general channel [i think]a post of a gold farmer/power lvl ad.
the lil' bastards will always find a way to sell their crap and annoy us.
p.s. Anyone want 500g for $200, or lvl1-70 in 25 days for $300......JUST KIDDING!!!